Creaky voice and utterance fluency measures in predicting perceived fluency and oral proficiency of spontaneous L2 Finnish

While utterance fluency measures are often studied in rela tion to perceived L2 fluency and proficiency, the effect of creaky voice remains ignored. However, creaky voice is frequent in a number of languages, including Finnish, where it serves as a cue for phrase-boundaries and turn-taking. In this study we inves tigate the roles of creaky voice and utterance fluency measures in predicting fluency and proficiency ratings of spontaneous L2 Finnish (F2) speech. In so doing, 16 expert raters participated in assessing narrative spontaneous speech samples from 160 learn ers of Finnish. The effect of creaky voice and utterance fluency measures on proficiency and fluency ratings was studied using …

Towards the phonetic basis of spoken second language assessment : temporal features as indicators of perceived proficiency level

The role of pause location in perceived fluency and proficiency in L2 Finnish

Fluency is a commonly used descriptor of second language (L2) speaking skills. Unplanned and too frequent pauses, hesitations, and repetitions disrupt the flow of speech and can cause temporal irregularities at all levels of speech hierarchy, from syllable rate to phrasing. However, most studies that attempt to quantify fluency disregard pause locations. The current study investigates, whether and which pause locations affect the perceived fluency and proficiency in L2 Finnish. Several pause parameters were computed from spontaneous L2 Finnish speech samples. Pause locations were investigated with regards to clauses and phrases as well as incomplete words. The effect of pause locations to h…

Prosody and fluency of Finland Swedish as a second language: Investigating global parameters for automated speaking assessment

This study investigates prosody and fluency of Finland Swedish as a second language (L2). The main objective is to investigate global measures of prosody and fluency as predictors of overall oral proficiency, fluency, and pronunciation ratings. We analyzed parameters related to temporal fluency, timing (based on syllable durations), and f0 change from spontaneous speech produced by 30 native and 235 non-native speakers of Finland Swedish representing proficiency levels from beginner to intermediate. We used pairwise comparisons to investigate the differences between native speech (L1) and L2 samples from different proficiency levels. To study the predictability of ratings with acoustic para…

Differences in acoustically determined sentence stress between native and L2 speakers of Finland Swedish

This study describes a pilot attempt to use acoustically determined sentence stress in distinguishing native and L2 speakers of Finland Swedish at different proficiency levels. The study is part of the DigiTala project that examines and develops automatic tools for spoken L2 assessment. Stressed syllables were detected in 235 L2 and 30 L1 speech samples using combinations of f0, intensity, and duration. Differences were found in the relative number of stressed syllables between native and L2 speakers using f0 and duration or all three features. Further research with more consistent speech data is needed to establish reliable automatic measures of sentence stress. nonPeerReviewed

9. Fluency in Language Assessment

Ihmisarvioijien näkemyksiä suullisen kielitaidon automaattisesta arvioinnista, digitaalisesta arviointiprosessista sekä puhesuorituksista arvioitavista ulottuvuuksista

Digitaaliset kielikokeet ovat nykypäivää muun muassa ylioppilastutkinnossa, ja lähes jokaisessa oppilaitoksessa on jonkinlainen digitaalinen oppimis- ja opetusalusta. Tekniikka on mullistanut kielitaidon testaamisen ja harjoittelun, mutta täysin automaattiset suullisen kielitaidon kokeet ovat vielä harvinaisia kansainvälisestikin. Tekoäly on kuitenkin arkipäiväistymässä monilla elämänalueilla, ja se herättää monenlaisia mielikuvia ja pohdintaa sen vaikutuksista ja eettisyydestä. Artikkelissa kartoitamme ja analysoimme ihmisarvioijien näkemyksiä digitaalisesti toteutetusta arviointiprosessista, jossa keräsimme ihmisarvioijilta arvioita suomen ja ruotsin puhenäytteisiin. Tutkimme myös arvioin…